With summer just around the corner, it’s been a busy time for catching up with favorite restaurants and checking out some new ones. Click through the above gallery for some of the best things I’ve eaten recently.
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Bag O’ Crab is exactly that: a steaming pile of seafood dumped onto a communal plate that’s a love-it-or-hate-it kind of thing. Wearing a large plastic bib and eating with your fingers is also self-selecting. If you’re up for both, or just find pulling off shrimp heads weirdly satisfying, Bag O’ Crab is your new favorite restaurant.
Primarily found in California, the seafood chain recently opened an outpost in Santa Rosa at the former Steele & Hops restaurant on Mendocino Avenue. The concept is pretty simple, especially if you’re into seafood boils. You pick your seafood, pick your sauce and wait for the hot mess to arrive. It’s literally hot. And messy.
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We asked the chefs and restaurateurs behind the Best New Restaurants in Sonoma County 2023 to share their favorite places to dine out in Sonoma County. Here’s what they said. Click through the above gallery for favorite dishes.
Owner Cyrus, Geyserville
DATE NIGHT PICK
The Shuckery in Petaluma. It’s the complete package of ambience, food, and attitude, all cleverly created with a modest budget.
WITH OUT-OF-TOWN GUESTS
Diavola in Geyserville. It’s got such great food, even beyond the signature pizzas. I love the ambience created from nearly nothing— the charming clothes hanging on lines across the alley leading to their back patio.
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After 30 years of Italian cooking at neighborhood restaurants throughout the Bay Area, chef Eddie Robles has learned a thing or two about sauces. No. 1: the creamier, the better. No. 2: the more, the better.
Old-school Italians could loudly protest those assertions. In Europe’s Italia, many “creamy” sauces don’t include heavy cream, just lovingly, achingly slow-mixed cheese with starchy pasta water, butter, eggs or olive oil.
And most traditional Italian dishes spare the sauce. As with bread and butter, the pasta or protein should be the star. There should be just enough sauce — or sugo — to lightly coat each bite of the main ingredient.
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A daughter who was feeling sad about her parent’s empty Vietnamese restaurant decided to take matters into her own hands and post a TikTok about it to boost business – and the internet proved how it can be a place for good.
Jennifer Le (@jennif3rle) posted a video on January 18, of her father as he stood behind the counter of his restaurant, Lee’s Noodle House, in Santa Rosa, California, as he looked over empty tables and waited for customers to walk through the door.
“It makes me so sad to see my parents just wait for customers to walk through the door to eat at their Vietnamese restaurant,” Le wrote in on-screen text.
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SANTA ROSA, Calif. (KGO) — The pandemic hit small businesses especially hard and many restaurants are still feeling the lasting impact.
A daughter took to social media in hopes that a few people might come back to her family’s restaurant, Lee’s Noodle House, in Santa Rosa, California.
Twenty-one-year-old Jennifer Le posted a seven-second video on TikTok showing her dad leaning against the counter. She wrote, “It makes me so sad to see my parents just wait for customers to walk through the door to eat at their Vietnamese restaurant.” She added music and the lyrics said, ‘I don’t care how long it takes.’
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Cue Cupid! Valentine’s Day nears, so it’s time to get dining plans in place.
This year, Feb. 14 falls on a Tuesday — with many chefs and restaurants rolling out the romance from Friday, Feb. 10 through the weekend.
And hearts will surely go thumpity-thump over such specials as prix-fixe, dinners for two, lavish tasting menus, wine pairings, amor-inspired cocktails, heart-shaped pizzas, heart-shaped doughnuts and even heart-shaped lasagna.
Check out our annual, V-Day dining guide — and scroll through the images above — for top dine-in and takeout specials offered at restaurants throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
The list has something for all tastes and budgets.
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Bag ‘o Crab seafood restaurant will soon open a new location in Santa Rosa at the former Steele and Hops location on Mendocino Avenue.
The Fremont-based restaurant chain specializes in seafood boils featuring lobster, crab (Dungeness, King, Snow), crawfish, shrimp, mussels and clams steamed up with a selection of Cajun and Asian seasonings.
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The conventional wisdom holds that teenagers spend too much time on the internet and not enough time learning. It also holds that the path to success in business goes through college.
But Robert Phouthavong is laying waste to those ideas.
The 18-year-old Santa Rosa High School graduate opened his first restaurant, Makizushi, just before Christmas, and he’s setting his sights on more.
He began working in a Sebastopol sushi restaurant with his father at age 15, and used popular platforms like YouTube and TikTok to research what it would take to open his own establishment, how to pass inspections and how to apply for permits and licenses.
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Chef Tony Ounpamornchai has been thinking about a seafood-centric restaurant for years. As the executive chef and co-owner of SEA Thai Bistro, SEA Thai Noodle Bar and Raku Ramen and Rolls, he’s been on a roll opening one restaurant after another at Montgomery Village and Coddingtown Mall in Santa Rosa.
Now he’s opened a fifth restaurant, Tony’s Galley Seafood & Bar, to fulfill his briny ambitions.
The impetus came when former Montgomery Village owners David and Melissa Codding, longtime fans of Ounpamornchai, gave the Thai restaurateur the financial backing he needed to make Tony’s Galley a reality.
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